A special Christmas present

Our beautiful baby Albie was born on December 17th weighing 9 pound 2.

A huge learning curve has followed in the last nine days and it has been very emotional because as well as learning to be a Mum I am also recovering from a quick birth which had a couple of complications and it is going to take me a bit longer than most to recover, something I'm struggling to deal with if I'm honest as I hate being ill!

I couldn't be more overwhelmed by how much I love this little person.

Lovely lonely walk #3

No, still no company Monday to Friday yet so trying to keep busy by going for walks. I'm going on shorter works and taking double the time there is a proper waddle going on now! I went to my favourite place in Overton (blogged here and here) it's a lovely little meadow which by the looks of things has been completely mowed down for the winter.

This bridge is a lovely spot on the way to the meadow and it looks like these ducks are not used to people without bread they swam over pretty quickly and one even jumped up I thought I was in for it and they would all attack me!

New scarf and hat bought this week though the hat makes me look like I'm off snowboarding and ten years younger!

I went home via the allotment (one day!) and the community garden for a little sit down (can't get used to all this taking it easy!).  The garden wasn't very exciting but I like the way it's tucked away down an alley that you can easily miss off the high street.

Lovely lonely walk #2

Off I went again last week for a different walk around the village.  I had a bit of a boring week last week so tried to pick it up by the end walking and swimming.  This week I'm distracting myself with Christmas shopping before it's too late and we're up to our eyeballs with nappies etc.  We're doing very well the decs are out and the majority of presents are bought just got some stocking fillers to sort out which I'm hoping to make!

Here are some pictures from last week's walk, I love how you can do the same walk over and over and find something different each time to capture.

Soggy festivities

Last weekend we naively thought the weather forecast would be right and took off to Winchester to enjoy the Christmas market in the "sunshine".  We took a look around the farmers market first and got pretty soggy then managed to enjoy a brief bit of dry weather for the Christmas market.

We had a good look around and enjoyed a Bratwurst AND we saw one of my favourite cooks off the telly Antonio Carluccio!!

We then headed into the city to have a look around the shops, the best being The Hambledon which has great pop up shops.  This time they had the Christmas shop and I was loving the box displays just wish I could have taken home all the really nice decorations.

Lovely lonely walk

Now I'm on my maternity leave I'm trying to not fill up my time by just sitting on the sofa and watching daytime telly*.  Since we've moved around so much since leaving university in 2007 we've not tied down a set of friends nearby so I'm quite the loner with a lot of time on my hands!

I've been swimming a few times and getting quite a bit of attention from the lifeguards I think they're worried my waters are going to go or something.  It does feel great swimming though so I'll see if I can keep going for the next few weeks, I can't believe I'm now 37 and a half weeks pregnant!  I also take advantage of the countryside on my doorstep so getting out to walk even if it only takes half an hour before my feet swell up it feels great.

Here are some pictures from a recent walk just me and the baby.

*I confess though there is a good amount of this going on